


Lines and Crossing

by BlueColoredDreams



Series: String Theory [3]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Episode: e060-066 The Stolen Century Parts 1-7, F/M, Fights, Hurt/Comfort, Major Character Injury, Panic Attacks, Relationship Issues, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-02-04 04:20:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12763026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueColoredDreams/pseuds/BlueColoredDreams
Summary: Magnus and Lucretia fight about the decision reached in the Arcaneum and fail to make up until it's too late, twice over.





	Lines and Crossing

**Author's Note:**

> Weird angst I needed to work through after thinking about how post-decision Lucretia must feel, how long she was left to her own devices on the last cycle, and how Magnus slots into that.  
> 

Lucretia grits her teeth and dips both pens into her inkwell, then begins to scratch out an account of the meeting for the day. With each passing word, heat begins to bloom in her cheeks. It spreads from the center of her face out, to her ears and down her neck.

She’d forgotten how total humiliation felt like. She used to be no stranger to it as a child—bookish and trusting and dreadfully awkward, she’d been a prime target for bullies and pranks. She’d always been shy, even with the team. But after that year, she’d gotten brave and the shy embarrassment of being the center of attention had faded.

But this, this wasn’t just stumbling over words or saying something odd. It sits in her gut and churns, aching and awful. Decades of work and planning and practice gone in less than five seconds. She was doomed the second she opened her mouth.

In a room full of family, no one backed her up. No one took her side or listened to what she had to say—she was shut down over and over until Davenport finally ended the fight. If they had just listened, if they had just let her explain.

She slams down her pens and exhales shakily, mouth trembling with an onslaught of tears. She wants to hide away—she can barely look any of them in the eye. But she has to go out and pretend she’s not humiliated; that she’s not frustrated. Like she’s swallowed their rebuff down and accepts it.

She _has_ to.

She combs her fingers through her hair and sighs, biting down the urge to sob.

Her door creaks open and she turns, face falling in a placid mask. Magnus grins at her and slips into her room, crossing to her desk in a few strides. His hands fall over her shoulders and he squeezes gently, leaning his chin on her head.

“What’re you doing?” he asks.

She flinches back from him, shrugging his hands off of her shoulders as the ache in her stomach spikes and twists. “Recording,” she says flatly. “I’m busy.”

She doesn’t want to see him. She doesn’t want him to lean all over her like he didn’t eviscerate her plan just like the others, then half-assedly offer her some support. She’d thought he’d side with her, for sure—there was already a majority, he could have at least pretended once it was obvious that Lup and Barry had support.

She knows it’s a bit silly to think of it that way, but shame boils up and over in her mind. Not even her _lover_ would back her up until she’d been thoroughly cut down. A quiet voice whispers in her mind that Barry would have never allowed Lup to be shown up like that, no matter how bad her idea might have been. Another chastises that she should know better than to compare herself to Lup and Barry anyway.

She’d thought he’d be a little bit softer, at least.

“Aw, babe,” Magnus complains, pressing a kiss to her hair. “That can wait? Or at least, you can do it later.”

“No,” Lucretia snaps. She scoots forward, dislodging him from leaning against her chair.

“Luce, what’s wrong?”

She turns to him, eyes wide. Her inhale sounds sharp, fragile, even to her own ears. 

“What do you mean, _what’s wrong_?” she demands. “How do you not know?”

Magnus steps back, pouting. “I don’t know,” he says.

“That’s funny,” she says, giving one bitter laugh. She picks her pens back up with shaking hands and blinks back tears. “I want to be alone, go away, Magnus.”

It’s stupid, she repeats to herself. It’s stupid to be upset. Don’t be upset. You were outvoted, it’s not personal. It’s not personal, it’s for the good of everything.

But it nags at her, catches her and puts thorns into her flesh. They didn’t _listen_ to her, deeming her risk too high even though she outlined an emergency protocol for dismantling the shield if things went pear-shaped. And why was _her_ plan too risky, when they all knew that people _killed_ over the Light, they wasted away before it, that it was so desirable that it created an eldritch abomination that destroyed so many worlds?

She grits her teeth down as Magnus speaks.

“Lucretia, I don’t get what your problem is,” he says. “Talk to me?”

He drapes his arms around her shoulders and presses his cheek close to her. His normally ticklish stubble scrapes against her skin and she can’t stand it. She jerks away.

“I told you to leave me alone!” she shouts.

The urge to lash out twitches in her fingers; it would be so easy to jerk an elbow back and into his stomach or to turn around and bring her hand against his face in just the way he’d taught her to. But it’s _Magnus_ and she doesn’t really want to hurt him, no matter how much she hurts. She just needs to be alone until she settles, until looking at him doesn’t swallow her with despair and betrayal and shame.

_He loved you but didn’t support you until it was too late._

“Woah, Lucy,” he says, backing up with his hands out. “What the fuck is bothering you?”

She slings her pens across the desk, sending ink spilling out onto the pages, over her carefully remembered accounts of everything they said she was lacking.

“If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you,” she snaps. The small sphere she’d made in the Arcaneum wobbles as she pushes away from her desk, stalking away to Fisher’s tank.

Magnus catches it as it rolls off her desk, pictures flickering inside of it, over and over. “It’s not about the meeting, is it, Lucretia?”

She presses her nails into her arms, pulling them tight against her chest as she watches Fisher swirl around, tentacles fluttering towards her.

“Lucretia, don’t be an ass about this, Lup and Barry were—”

“I’m an ass?!” she snaps, turning towards him. “I’m an ass, and all you did was offer some half-ass ‘we’ll try this if Barry and Lup’s don’t work’ after everyone put together all the reasons why theirs would work and mine wouldn’t?! After everything I worked for just got eviscerated—after you sat and told me that it was making a decision that’s not theirs?! What about giving some world something that’s bound to be dangerous! We make decisions every cycle that aren’t ours to make, this isn’t any different—”

“You’re throwing a fit because you’re embarrassed?” Magnus asks, shaking his head. “Lucretia, you’re better than that. You heard them, if we cut a world off—”

“ _You didn’t listen to me!_ ” she shouts, her words tearing at her throat with the force of them.

“You didn’t listen,” she repeats hoarsely, shaking from head to toe. “It could be removed if it didn’t work, all it’s meant to do is starve the Hunger, and no one listened to me—”

“No one knew you’d been working on it, everyone knew Lup and Barry have been running projections and tests for decades and—”

“You should have known,” she says softly. “You should have backed me up. You could have made them listen to me, Magnus, at least a little.”

“I’m not going to lie about something important, Lucretia! And I did—I told you we’d do yours—”

“ _I’m_ not important? Do you even love me at all? Barry would _never_ embarrass Lup like that!”

Magnus inhales sharply, his face pink with anger. “Don’t fucking twist what I’m saying—this is more important than anything at all, Lucretia, and I thought you knew that.”

“Of course it is, but all we have is each other and our backs and not a single one of you have ever had mine, even though I had yours!”

“Don’t make this about that year, Lucy,” Magnus yells. “We didn’t know, we didn’t know what it was going to put you through, but don’t fucking lord it over our heads that we fucked up and you had to learn how to do it alone! You should have already known! But you kept to yourself, because you were too self-absorbed to realize all hands needed to be on deck day one! We were all scared, so why should you have been an exception for all that time! Why am I supposed to trade my integrity so you aren’t embarrassed? We’re not kids, Lucretia, stop acting like one!”

Lucretia flinches back, eyes wide. She clutches the collar of her robe, fingers tight in the material as she gapes. The fine gold chain that holds her glasses on her face trembles with her, frames slipping down her nose. She’s looking at him like she doesn’t know who he is.

“If that’s how you feel about me, you can leave,” she says softly.

“Don’t pull this shit,” he snaps. “We didn’t do it because we don’t like you or you’re not important or whatever—”

“I should have never told you I felt like that,” she cuts over him; “You don’t have the right to—”

“Shut up! It’s not true, I’ve told you a thousand times it’s not true, it’s just that your plan sucked, you’re not arcanists like they are, I trust them with this—”

“Go away! Go away, I don’t—shut up!” she sobs, mortified at the tears spilling down her cheeks. “Shut up, shut up!”

“Stop being an idiot, Lucretia! Be quiet for a second and realize how selfish you’re being with this—”

She reaches into the pocket of her robes and draws her wand. He’s pushed back into the hallway, a hazy field surrounding her doorway. He watches as she sinks to the floor of her bedroom, drawing her robe around her as she sobs, the sound muffled by the shield she’d cast between the two of them.

He turns away in disgust, and slams her door behind him.

He storms into the laboratory and startles both Lup and Barry, who are bent over a fully unfurled butchers’ roll of paper, numbers and arcane symbols scrawled over it as they work in tandem.

“I wasn’t wrong, was I?” he demands them.

Barry blinks over his glasses; Lup reaches out and pushes them up for him, then returns to her work at an equation spanning half of the table, lips moving silently as she does the figures in her head.

“About?” Barry questions, turning his attention back to Lup and her equation, eyes flickering over the scrawling mass of it.

“This afternoon. Lucretia’s upset about it. I told her she was being an idiot and she kicked me out.”

“She’ll get over it,” Lup says faintly, carrying her equation over one column and clicking an abacus with an efficiency that seems to make no sense to anyone but her and Barry.

“Decimal, babe,” Barry mumbles, tapping the paper. “We’ll die without that.”

Lup hums quietly, continuing on.

Barry watches for a few more moments, then is startled out of his daze, the gravity of Magnus’ statement sinking into him. “Lup,” he says.

“Shhh, magic’s happening,” she snaps, translating her math into a series of shorthand symbols that correspond to a spell.

“Babe,” he says again, more urgently. “You told Magnus to tell Lucretia to get over it.”

“Mmhmm,” Lup drones, dropping in a sequence of similar sigils to try. “Whatever _it_ is.”

“Lup,” Barry repeats again, gently shaking her shoulder. “She got her feelings hurt.”

Lup looks over at him, eyes a bit glazed and brow tight. “Yeah?”

“Take a moment,” Barry suggests, pressing his forehead to hers. “Take a breath.”

Lup blinks at him for a few seconds, then sighs. She closes her eyes and breathes in and then leans back. “Now, what did he say?”

“This afternoon, it sounds like Lucretia’s feelings really got hurt—and you just told Magnus that he was right to call her an idiot.”

Lup frowns. “Oh. I mean, Bear, I mean, it wasn’t anything personal with her?”

“I think she might not be upset about _that_. Magnus led in with asking if he was wrong, I think she might be embarrassed that he didn’t back her up,” Barry muses. “ _I’d_ be, in their situation. Actually, yanno, I’d probably die then and there.”

Lup makes a noise of contemplation. “They’ll work it out,” she says.

* * *

They leave the world with the Arcaneum soon after, and in the first few furious weeks to reach the Light, Magnus and Lucretia’s frostiness isn’t easily noticeable. They’re all wound tight with purpose and frustration, and when the Scouts appear three weeks before they’ve even gotten a good lead for the Light, it simmers over.

“Not this year,” Davenport says. “We’re still on course to retrieve the Light—Barry, Lup, use this year to tighten up your equations.”

“They’re pretty tight,” Lup says. “I wish there was a way to test this before it went live.”

“Lucretia, if you’d like to study the Light as well,” Davenport leads, “Go ahead.”

“Yeah, girl, it’s quality time with us,” Lup laughs, clapping Lucretia on the back. Lucretia laughs and nudges her with an elbow as Lup drapes over her back. “Me and Bear’ll answer anything you wanna know, if you’ll retranscribe some of Bear’s chicken scratch for me?”  

“It’s shitty that we can’t go ahead with our plans this year,” Davenport continues. “But we’re in this now, don’t let it affect our morale.”

“I know one person who’s probably relieved,” Magnus mutters.

Lucretia stiffens and grips her pen tighter, mouth a tight line. Her eyes shine bright in the galley light, jaw twitching with the effort of keeping her mouth still.

“That was completely out of line,” Davenport snaps. “Everyone agreed on what we were doing going forward, including Lucretia herself. Whatever issues you two are having personally, I will not allow you to hash them out during team meetings.”

“Sorry, Capt’n,” Magnus sighs, looking away from the group.

Lucretia looks back down at her papers, and doesn’t lift her head the rest of the briefing. Where they’d grown used to her interjecting since her year alone—leading ideas about how to find the Light, questions about their world, and suggestions for party divisions—she’s silent save for the sound of her pen on paper.

Eyes linger on her and then on Magnus, the tension in the room suffocating. When Davenport dismisses the meeting, she stands and scurries out despite the crew’s longstanding tradition of cocoa and snacks after a debriefing. Lucretia hasn’t skipped cocoa in well over fifty years.

Merle scrutinizes Magnus carefully, stroking his beard. “You two fightin’ _still_?”

“She’ll get over it,” Magnus says, dropping into his chair.

“If you say so,” Merle says slowly.

Magnus leaves with the scouting party the next day, and doesn’t come back.

* * *

They get the Light, but all the spell slots in the world can’t save a melon-sized hole through the gut.

Lucretia spends the rest of the cycle feeling like she’s drifting. Magnus has died before, he’s died several times, but they’ve never parted before on bad terms.

Magnus died and the last thing he’d said to her was cruel.

It claws up her throat and latches into her mind. Magnus is gone and he thought she was relieved that they’d condemned another world to fighting the Hunger when he died.

He’d left right after publicly accusing her of that.

Her fingers drift over his things, not touching. She wants to grab his coat and cling to it, live in the hollow nest of his bed like she has before. Keep the dust off of his things and keep his armor well oiled and cared for in his absence, refill his candy jar with local sweets so he’d have something new when he came back.

But she doesn’t think she’s allowed to anymore.

She just lightly moves her hand over each thing, mouth pinched as the dust begins to cover his tools, as his room grows stale. And then she leaves, throwing herself into making her shield spell larger, stronger, and more foolproof.

She spends time with Barry and Lup and helps them with their figures, but she doesn’t talk much and they don’t comment on it.

When they reset, she hangs back as everyone flocks towards Magnus, fingers laced tightly over her chest as she watches him laugh.

She wants to run to him, fling her arms around his shoulders and hold him tight like she’s done so many times before. Kiss his forehead and press cool fingers to his eye and sleep soundly for the first time in a year, safe in his arms. But she feels like she’s forgotten how to move, how to breathe. She just watches, feeling helpless as her soul tries to tug her forward.

“Go get the journals, Luce!” Lup calls, grinning at her.

That, that she knows how to do—they always read her records now, after someone has died, just to fill them in. Not a whole lot happened after he died—they kept airborne, but there’s some wood she salvaged for him and Lup and Barry made up a spell that made everything taste like licorice because Taako had complained about fennel seeds in sausage, and Magnus would enjoy it. She smiles back and turns—she’s written him little notes, too, and she can read those out, and the idea settles her nervousness to something manageable.

She can sit by him and read her parts, about the nifty little spell she developed that sharpened all the knives in the kitchen that she could use on his axe for him and his carving tools, and how Fisher had eaten a tube of paint, and then maybe she could tell him how much she missed him.

“No,” Magnus says. “Y’all can tell me without them.”

Lucretia freezes. She turns at the doorway, throat tight. “Pardon?” she whispers.

Magnus isn’t looking at her. He’s looking at Lup and Taako, then Barry and Merle, and then Davenport. “I mean, it’s more natural if you tell what you remember yourselves, right? What’d  you guys get up to without me?”

He’s still upset with her; it’s been a year for her, but only moments for him, and he died being upset with her. She backs up slowly and then runs—she almost locks herself in her room, but she doesn’t want anyone to find her. No where feels safe enough, private enough. She grabs at her robe, feeling panic set in.

She feels like the walls are closing in on her, throat tight and breath short. The halls of the ship, normally a comfort, feel unsafe. Anyone could find her, and she doesn’t want to be seen. She doesn’t want anyone to look at her, she doesn’t want anyone to see her cry, she doesn’t want Magnus to know. She doesn’t want to prove him right, doesn’t want to be selfish.

She flees their quarters, the cold air of the new system opening her lungs. She grips the railing, casting her eyes around. They’re hovering above land—she’s trapped. She hears footsteps and someone calling for her.

She doesn’t hear who it is—they’re male—but she only hears a voice calling for her, telling her to come out, and the forest they drift over looks like gray ash to her. It’s been so long since she’s sunk into her memories like this that she doesn’t know how to claw her way back out; with nothing to ground her, everything looks like the Judge’s world all over again.

Someone reaches for her arm.

Her heart leaps in her chest and her throat burns, the muscle memory of having a knife sink into it fueling her panic. She turns and finds herself at the railings, but she can’t leave the ship—they can’t have the ship, it’s all over if they take it.

She brings her hand back, swinging it as hard as she can. A hand fixes against her wrist, thin and cool, stopping her mid-swing.

“Hachi machi! Lucy, it’s just me!”

A face swims into recognition, Taako, wide-eyed with surprise. She sags until her knees hit the deck, hand still held above her head.

Taako kneels in front of her, keeping a grasp of her hand. “Bubbleh, I know my face is too good to look at but you don’t have to rearrange it for me.” 

“Taako,” Lucretia gasps, body shuddering as she tries to affix his name to his face. “Taako.”

“Hey,” he says softly. “Hey, you’re okay Lucy.”

She curls her fingers against his wrist, holding on tightly. She nods, struggling to even her breathing. Her heart beats so hard against her sternum that it hurts, she feels like it might burst.

“Do you want me to grab Maggie?” he asks.

She shakes her head, gripping onto his wrist so hard her hand shakes with the effort of it. “No,” she whispers. She trembles, feeling cold under her robe, air whipping around them. The scent of resinous pine suffuses the air—she focuses on that, on the cool touch of Taako’s hand against her arm, the fabric of her robe against her neck.

She opens her mouth to speak, to say something, to thank Taako for coming after her, anything, but a quiet sob tears out of her instead.

“Oh, geeze,” Taako mutters. “Don’t… don’t cry, _shit_.”

She sobs harder, terror and grief exhausting her until all she can do is gasp and whimper. “We’ve gotta find it, that’s the only way he’ll forgive me,” she cries. “We have to get the Light.”

“Hey, he, uh. Lucy, we’ll get it and, uh, mm, _yeah_ ,” he says uncomfortably. He rises slowly, gently tugging her up. He touches her back with light fingers, arm hovering around her waist but not touching. “Shit. Lup’s better with this bullshit. Let’s come onto bed,” he says slowly.

He begins to hum, off tune and without rhythm. She feels him trace the shape of a spell on her back, and it all slides from her like water on glass. She blinks slowly, feeling fuzzy as Taako leads her to her room.

She hears distant shouting, Lup’s voice loud as it echoes down the hallways. Taako clicks his tongue beside her and opens up her door.

“In you get, m’dude. Sleep it all off,” he says, giving her a soft push. His face is twisted oddly, something fond creeping across the grimace of discomfort on his mouth.

“Thank you,” she says quietly.

He reaches out and ruffles her hair. “Nah,” he says fondly, closing the door with a quiet click.

She stumbles to her bed and sinks into the sheets, letting Sleep wash over her.

* * *

“You asshole!” Lup shrieks, punching Magnus’ shoulder as hard as she can. “What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

Magnus holds his hands up, backing away from Lup, who advances on him and grabs his collar. “Listen, I just—she didn’t want to do it, she was still upset so I gave her an out—”

“Bullshit! How dare you! You went and died and of course she was upset! She’s been alone all year!”

“She didn’t come and—”

“So what she didn’t hug you! There’s no rule saying she has to throw herself on you when she’s relieved to see you!”

“She’ll get over it! She’ll get over it! You all read your parts anyway, it’s only because we wanted to include her that we started that—”

“So you isolate her after she’s been alone all year because you’re still angry with her for having her feelings hurt!”

“Lup, calm down,” Barry urges, gently pulling Lup away from Magnus. “Taako’s gone to grab her and we’ll all sit down and talk about this, we should have done it sooner. Magnus, we shouldn’t have told you it was okay to fight with her—she’s been real supportive of us and we fucked up by not supporting her.”

“Her idea wasn’t going to work, she’s being stubborn for being angry for that long!”  
  
Barry sighs. Merle shakes his head.

“Magnus,” Merle says. “Why are you really angry with her?”

“Because she’s pulling shit like I don’t care about her, she should know I do—”

“You’re not acting like you care,” Lup snaps. “You needled her in front of everyone, then up and died, and then you excluded her from an easy source of comfort! This was why I didn’t want you going after her!”

“You told me she’d get over it!”

“I wasn’t listening! I was wrong, fuck! Okay, I messed up! There!”

“Will you fucknuts be quiet,” Taako snaps.

“Where’s Lucretia?” Lup and Magnus demand at the same time.

Taako rolls his eyes. “Asleep. I put her to bed, because she was flipping her shit up on deck.” He points a look towards Magnus. “If you go and make her worse, you’ll be eating nothing but asparagus all fuckin’ year, dude, fix it in the morning.”

Magnus scowls, but slinks back to his room, dismayed to find it dusty and uncared for. Regret wells up in him and he sinks against his bed, face in his hands. He knows, even without Lup yelling at him, or Taako chastising him, or the looks that were shot his way by Merle and Barry, that he shouldn’t have acted the way he did.

He misses Lucretia, he missed her even before he’d died, but each time she avoided his gaze, each time she dodged him in the hall, it made him angry all over again. The first thing he remembered when he came to was that he was angry, was that she was avoiding him.

He rises slowly, settling at his desk instead, whittling away as he wavers between anger over her reluctance to talk with him, hurt at being treated like he didn’t truly love her, and shame over treating her exactly like she’d accused him of behaving.

In the morning, he swears. They’ll talk in the morning.

* * *

It’s harder to get Lucretia alone than Magnus wanted—she’s thrown herself into preparations more than usual. If she’s not locked up in the lab with Lup and Barry, fine-tuning a spell to track the Light as it falls, she’s down on the surface, foraging for food with Taako and Merle.

“It’s no good,” Taako sighs a week in, wincing as Merle smears a thick, floridly purple goo against a gash down his thigh. “The people here aren’t chill at all.”

“We’re going to have to have a party ready to go as soon as we spot the Light,” Lucretia says softly. “If the locals get it, we don’t have a chance.”

“And there’s no hope of bargaining?” Davenport asks.

Lucretia shakes her head. There’s a deep purple bruise on her jaw from an earlier encounter with the inhabitants of the forested plane they inhabit for the cycle. “They choose violence over civility.”

“I wouldn’t,” Taako says. “We’re better off winging it alone this year.”

“It should come down tomorrow evening,” Barry says, paging through a notepad of equations. “North-western hemisphere, _if_ the signal we’re picking up in the system is the Light and not some other disturbance in the bond forces.”

“We’ll take it,” Davenport says. “Lup, Taako, Lucretia—you three have gone down more than anyone this cycle. I want you on the ground as soon as we can track the Light.”

“Wait a second!” Magnus bursts out, slamming his hands on the table. “I have to go!”

“We need someone to protect the ship,” Davenport says calmly, staring Magnus down.

“Who’s going to protect _them_?!”

“Hey, dude, we’re capable,” Lup complains.

“Taako is injured,” Magnus protests. “And Lucretia—”

“Lucretia can take care of herself,” Lucretia says icily, fixing her eyes on Magnus, her lips thin with anger.

“Lucy,” Magnus pleads. “You’ve already gotten injured down there, you need—”

“The Captain gave orders,” Lucretia whispers. “Follow them.”

He gapes at her, but she turns her head away from him.

Davenport clears his throat awkwardly. “…Obviously we’d like to retrieve the Light as quickly as we can, but use discretion. I don’t want anyone rushing at cost to the crew. Dismissed.”

Lucretia rises first, and Magnus scrambles after her. “Lucy,” he says desperately, reaching for her elbow. “Hey.”

She shrugs him away, then turns, clutching her journal to her chest. “What is it, Magnus?”

“I don’t l like this,” he says, touching her jaw gently. “I need to go with you. This place is dangerous.”

“We’re going to get the Light,” she sighs, “It’s always dangerous.”

“Lucretia,” he urges. “Look at me?”

She closes her eyes and shakes her head.

“Do you… do you miss me at all?” Magnus pleads with her. “I miss you, Lucretia, please, can we talk?”

“When I get back,” she says. “I have to prepare.”

“Lucretia.”

She sighs softly, reaching out to touch Magnus’ cheek, right where his black eye has faded to a yellowish brown. “When I get back, Magnus,” she promises. “Of course I miss you, I just…”

She shakes her head and backs up, brows drawn. “Later, okay? We’ll bring back the Light before the Hunger finds it and… and we’ll talk, and we’ll see what Lup and Barry wanna do.”

He grabs her hand as it falls away, kissing it softly. “Okay.”

He watches her leave the next morning, pack strapped to her back and his knife on her hip, dread building up in his gut. He wants to run after her, go with them, keep her from going; something doesn’t feel right to him, and the kiss she let him press on her forehead isn’t enough.

But he hangs back, watching them disappear into the forested gloom, mouth tasting like bile.

* * *

The Light, by their calculations and the magical meter Lup carries, is a few days hike northwest, and takes them through the fringes of two settlements. They move only at night and barely talk. Lucretia feels at a disadvantage, even with Taako and Lup casting Dark Vision on her in turns. She’s twisted her ankle and covered herself in scrapes tumbling into a hole that Lup and Taako jumped easily, but she’s determined to keep going.

“This is taking so much longer than it should,” Lup complains three nights in, in the small camp they’ve made inside of a cave by a river. Taako’s hung moss and pine boughs over the entrance, hiding the light from the small fire Lup’s conjured for them to huddle around.  

“I’m sorry,” Lucretia says. “I’m holding you guys back.”

“Honey, it’s not you,” Lup murmurs. “It’s this stupid plane; if we could just hike freely…It’s so close.”

“Not gonna happen, chickadee,” Taako sighs. “They don’t fall for illusions, since they don’t believe in magic, and anyone outside of their tribal system is dead meat. I say we blast off this place once the year is gone.”

Lup smacks him upside the head. “Taako!”

“What, if we get the Light it just gets shaken up a bit,” he sulks, leaning away as Lup reaches to pop him again.

“I’m going to see if it’s clear,” Lucretia murmurs, standing from the small fire. “Sunset should be soon.”

She creeps out of the cave and down the embankment it sits upon. She darts as quietly as she can between the trees, scrambling up one. She unties the bandana from her hair and wraps it around an inner branch so she can find it again.

She shimmies along a thick branch, and then rises to her feet, carefully hopping from branch to branch in the thick canopy, getting closer to the settlement so she can gauge their activity for the evening.

She watches as the tribes break apart from their communal dinner area—if they weren’t so dangerous, it would be fascinating to watch. Each night, someone new would speak or sing as the others ate. She longed to write about it, to draw it, but it’s too dangerous and too time consuming.

Someone dumps dirt over the fire pit in the center of the town, and Lucretia begins to creep back towards camp. She tucks her bandana into her pocket and slides from a lower branch, landing on all fours. She rises, and then screams as she’s snatched up off the ground. She struggles, sinking her teeth into the arm around her neck. She keeps shouting, rounding to punch her captor in the throat. She hears the snap of a branch, and then stumbles as a rock is brought down on the back of her skull. 

The world goes dark and fuzzy, but she tries to keep screaming in the hopes Taako and Lup will hear her, and know to stay away. She can’t hear anything, all she knows is pain, and someone wrenches her up by her hair; she passes out in earnest, and knows no more.

* * *

She comes to in waves—first, pain. Then, dizziness. She reaches out and tries to grasp at something, anything, to physically claw her way back to consciousness. Someone grabs her hand. The same someone puts a hand on her forehead. Light flickers around them.

She smells smoke, she smells fire, she smells burnt flesh. She sinks back under.

* * *

She rouses groggily, back of her head throbbing dully. Lup and Taako sleep nearby. They’re in the same cave, and panic takes her.

“Lup, Taako, we have to go, they know we’re around,” she says urgently, shaking them both.

“Oh, honey,” Lup yawns. “We’re chill.”

Taako grumbles and sits up, stretching languidly. “Lulu barbequed them all. It’s good.”

“Had to,” Lup says, watching Lucretia’s face twist. “Only way to get you back. Mission’s shot now, you’ve got a concussion and the Scouts are gonna show soon. Might as well go on back.”

“Should have left me,” Lucretia grumbles, slowly sitting up. Her head throbs dully, and the cave wavers around her, but she feels more put together than she thought she would. “Gotten the Light.”

“I… listen,” Lup says, gently putting her hand on Lucretia’s knee.

“I don’t want to stay here,” she confesses, voice sounding weak. “I don’t get to make that call, but I don’t want it to be here, and it can’t be without you.”

“Oh,” Lucretia says softly. She leans into the mass of robes and packs they’ve built around her, feeling exhaustion creep up around her. “I want you two to get the Light anyway.”

“One of us needs to stay with you m’dude,” Taako says.

Lucretia shakes her head. “I feel okay,” she says honestly. “I don’t think it’s that bad of a concussion.”

“Are you sure?” Lup asks, chewing on her lip. “You were out for a while.”

“I was tired before they attacked, I think maybe I just needed the rest. But I’m sure. Leave me here and go after the Light. We know it’s not far.”

Taako and Lup look at each other, faces both pinched into similar expressions of distaste. Finally, Lup sighs and stands. “Taako, we better hurry if we wanna grab it before the other tribe in the area comes to check out the fire. Lucy, you send a message _right away_ if you feel bad at all, okay?” she asks, coming to kneel beside Lucretia. “It’s gonna take us a day or so.”

Lucretia smiles and beckons Lup forward. She kisses her cheek softly, holding Lup’s face close to hers. “Thank you for saving me, Lup,” she says gently.

“I did it ‘cause Magnus would be prime to throw fits if you died,” Lup says, stroking her jaw with cool fingers. “It’s not like I’d miss you or anything,” she teases.

Lucretia laughs and pats her cheek, settling herself in her pallet. “Be careful.”

“You too,” Taako laughs, saluting her as they duck out of the cave.

“Back soon,” Lup promises.

Lucretia gently pulls her robe back over her like a blanket, wincing as her head throbs. She shifts uncomfortably for a moment, then picks up her water and sips on it, staring at the smoldering fire Lup left behind.

She’ll sleep this off, she thinks. She touches the backside of her head, feeling a tender welt with a slight crusting of blood—nothing too terrible, but when she prods at it, nausea sweeps over her. She drops her hands and lies back, breathing shallowly.

She closes her eyes and wills herself to sleep.

She rouses, the unearthly howling of the Scouts waking her. Not this time.

Her head pounds and she slips back into uneasy sleep.

When she wakes again, she’s struck with momentary panic, unsure of what roused her until she tries to sit up. Pain rockets down her neck and across her face from the base of her skull, so sharp and relentless that it brings a whimper to her throat.

She struggles to sit upright, feeling like the entire world is twisting around her.

“Lup? Taako?” she calls, unable to recall for a moment where they are. She whimpers again, pressing her hands over her eyes against the pain.

They’ve gone after the Light—she sent them away. She has no way of telling how long it’s been just sitting. She crawls forwards and immediately has to stop and vomit. The exertion pounds against her head, which crashes a new wave of nausea over her, until all she can do is lay there, curled in a small ball as she waits, pain like pressure building up behind her eyes.

Something’s wrong, she knows it deep in her gut, but she barely has the energy to breathe, much less cast a spell to summon them.

* * *

Someone touches her. She groans and sobs, barely able to do even that.

“She wasn’t okay,” Taako says tersely, “Shit. _Shit_.”

“Shut up!” Lup snaps. Hands on her face, a cloth cleaning her chin and neck where she’s been laying in her own sick. “Lucy, honey, how long have you been in pain?”

Lucretia hears her voice, tries to move her mouth. She tries to say that she doesn’t know, she thinks she says she doesn’t know, but Lup and Taako are silent.

“Lucretia, when did it get worse?” Lup repeats.  

She wants Magnus. Magnus would know what she said. She tells them as much.

“Lulu, it doesn’t matter,” Taako says, voice close to shaking. “We have to scram.”

“God, okay, yeah, okay,” Lup says. “Leave all the packs, _yes_ , leave that too, we’ll come back for it or whatever, I don’t give a shit about it right now.”

“The Light?” Lucretia asks. They carry on like they don’t hear her; is she even speaking at all? 

“Taako’s going to pick you up, Lucretia,” Lup soothes, “We’re gonna go now.”

Lucretia shudders and cries as Lup scoops her up and helps Taako situate her on his back.

“How the fuck are we gonna get there in time,” Taako hisses.

“Expeditious Retreat, you numbnut,” Lup snaps. “And I’ve got Misty Step, so between the two we can cover some distance.”

“Okay, okay, cool, cool. Hurry the fuck up with casting then?”

Lucretia groans and Lup and Taako exchange looks of dual horror. They cast and keep casting.

Lup runs out of slots first, swearing in a panic.

“We’re almost there,” Taako says, walking as quickly as he can without running. “You shouldn’t have used up so many fuckin’ torching a town.”

“They had Lucy, and I didn’t know what they were going to do to her,” she says. “Lucy, Lucy, hey, are you okay, honey?”

Lucretia sobs softly against Taako’s hair, unable to do anymore than cling to him in pain.

“We’re gonna get you back to Merle, honey,” Lup says, gently touching Lucretia’s back.

“Magnus,” Lucretia says, her mouth not quite forming the word right, her consonants sounding a bit mushy. “Didn’t say goodbye right… shoulda… shoulda talked more…”

“Won’t matter,” Taako says. “I can see the ship.”

Lup grits her teeth against Taako’s lie. “Yeah, we’re real close.”

Lucretia doesn’t respond immediately, her groan weak and strained to Lup’s ears. Her breathing is strange and fluttery. Taako adjusts his grip of her on his back and speeds up, nearly jogging with her on his back.

The movement jostles her and she groans again.

“I know,” Lup soothes.

She keeps pace with Taako easily, heart skipping in her chest as she tries to keep contact with Lucretia’s arms. She notices immediately when Lucretia stiffens, arms jerking loose of her hold on Taako’s neck.

“Taako, we have to stop,” Lup pants, her voice high, “She’s having a seizure—”

“I know, but—but we can’t stop,” he says. “We have to get going.”

“What if it makes it worse, we have to stop,” Lup pleads, bracing her hands on Lucretia’s back.

Taako helps Lup shift Lucretia down onto the forest floor, gut twisting as he watches Lucretia thrash against Lup. “I’m—stay here, stay right here, I’m going, it’s faster if it’s me,” he says.

Lup looks up at him, eyes red rimmed and shiny—he knows he doesn’t look any better, his hair matted where Lucretia’s thrown up on him and his face white with fear.

“I barely have enough slots for this,” he swears, then shifts into a downy-white owl and shoots away into the forest.

Lup gulps back tears, shifting Lucretia carefully so her head is in her lap once she falls still. She strokes her hair slowly, whispering to her. Lucretia’s eyes are glassy and unfocused, and when she closes them, they don’t open again.

She hangs on a little longer after that, but that’s when Lup knows she’s gone. They’ve all seen death so many times now that Lup knows when it’s coming.

By the time Taako makes it back with Merle, Magnus crashing through behind them, she’s been gone for a little less than a half-hour.

Magnus buries his axe so deep in a tree that none of them can remove it when he leaves with her body in tow. Merle talks the tree into splitting itself open so they can retrieve it, each exchanging looks of quiet exhaustion.

It’s going to be a long cycle.

* * *

Fisher cries without her. Magnus doesn’t think she’s ever died so early since she saved them. Mid-cycle, late cycle, maybe. 

But Lucretia _never_ dies early, not before the Judges, and not after. The ship is quieter, more subdued. Lup and Taako don’t joke as much, despite Merle telling them over and over that there was nothing they could have done for her. Despite Merle telling him the same thing, Magnus thinks they should feel guiltier, that they shouldn’t joke at all. 

If they’d taken him with them, she never would have gotten hurt. He would have noticed that she wasn’t okay even if she insisted she was. He tells them this once, and their faces just crumble in. Magnus takes Barry's terse rebuttal in indignant silence, turning away and cracking his hand against a wall. 

Merle gives up explaining brain injuries and slow bleeds and delayed onset trauma. Most everyone gives up talking to Magnus at all.

They drift above the forest, circling the same areas over and over, because it’s the only places that are safe to descend the ship for food and water. Some days, Magnus can go above deck and see the clear black ring of ruined forest on the horizon where Lup decimated an entire village.

It feels so close from up high. It pains him so much to think of how close they’d been to her—an hour on foot, fifteen minutes with a spell.

An hour and fifteen minutes too far, too late.

Davenport calls him into his room one day mid-cycle.

“I say this because there’s no disciplinary actions that I can take against you, Magnus,” Davenport sighs. “But the fact of the matter is that your behavior is unacceptable. I know it’s hard,” he says, studying Magnus’ face. “I know you miss Lucretia. We all do. But taking it out on Taako and Lup when they were unfortunate enough to be with her is unacceptable. Taking it out on Merle is even _more_ unacceptable.”

“You should have sent me,” Magnus snaps, fists balling up at his sides. “You should have sent me! It wouldn’t have happened, she wouldn’t have gotten hurt—”

“We all get hurt! All of us! Regardless of who is on duty or not! Lup and Taako were clear that she only ventured out into unsafe territory because she was anxious to get to the Light! And if we’re pointing fingers, then may I remind you of who put it into her mind that she was okay with not finding it!”

Magnus blanches and Davenport puts his face in his hands. He sighs again, deep and weary. “Magnus,” he says hoarsely. “This crew is my family now too, you and Lucretia and the twins are children, you are all children, and… this should not have happened, but it did, and us pointing fingers and laying blame is a game we should have left behind over ninety years ago. You are dismissed.”

Magnus turns and leaves without a word, crawling back into Lucretia’s bed. It stopped smelling like her months ago, but if he closes his eyes, he can remember her like she’s still there.

Only five more months. Five more long, lonely, months.

* * *

Magnus watches her spin back into shape, the silver of her soul dancing into shape across the deck from him. She stands, blinking at the light for a few seconds before everyone rushes her.

He hangs back for a second, finally understanding why she didn’t go to him a year before. He breaks himself from his trance when she looks over at him, dislodging an arm from around Barry to reach out for him.

He steps forward at once and laces their fingers, squeezing as tight as he can. He blinks back the urge to cry, face burning as she shyly smiles at him, ducking her head away from his gaze only when Lup wedges herself between them.

“Here, here, Dav put the records where we can reach,” Lup babbles, reaching across to snag the heavy bound book from the control panel.

Lucretia just shakes her head. “I… um. You don’t have to read to me, I can look myself, I’m actually," she laughs awkwardly as Lup nuzzles her temple with relish. “ I’m actually really embarrassed about all this,” she says, nudging Lup’s jaw with her cheek.

“Missy, you don’t get to pull that,” Merle says, patting her knee.

Taako tugs at her; she stumbles a bit, blinking as the others unwind from her sides. “C’mon, bubbleh, we’re gonna go make some cocoa and some cookies and tell you all about what happened.”

Magnus follows behind her, keeping their grip tight.

Everyone settles in the galley, Lup snuggling up on Lucretia on one side, Magnus on her other.

He watches her quietly, listening as the others fill her attentive silence with words. He holds her hand and doesn’t let go. Her thumb moves in small circles against his palm, giggling at a joke Lup tells with expansive gestures that bring her hands (not-so) accidentally against the back of his head.

Magnus doesn’t have any jokes, doesn’t have any stories this time around. He simply watches her; he sees her begin to grow weary as Merle talks about a type of moss from the previous plane that worked wonders as a bandage; he watches as her eyes begin to droop and as she lays her head on the table as Lup and Barry begin to explain to her some metaphysics behind a spell the three of them were crafting for the ship.

“I think it’s time Lucretia gets some rest,” Magnus interrupts.

He stands and gently scoops her up into his arms. She squeaks in surprise, and loops an elbow behind his neck, holding on as he adjusts her. He catches sight of Lup’s scowl and resists the urge to stick his tongue out at her.

“Goodnight,” Lucretia says softly. She beckons one finger towards Lup, who stands immediately.

“I’m sorry, Lup, I really thought I was okay,” she says, leaning over Magnus’ shoulder to kiss Lup’s forehead. “Thank you for burning slots on me, Taako.”

“Natch,” he says, slowly tearing a marshmallow, eyes fixed on the table.

“Guys,” Magnus says. “Tomorrow.”

“Fuck you,” Lup snaps back. She ruffles Lucretia’s hair and cups her cheek fondly. “No more dying for you, okay, Lucy?”

“I didn’t _mean_ to,” Lucretia complains.

Magnus clenches his jaw tightly, and Lucretia hums against his ear, turning to nose his hairline softly. “Okay,” she murmurs, “Bedtime.”

She’s silent as he carries her to her bed, door closing loudly as Magnus nudges it shut with his boot. Fisher trills in excitement, pushing themselves against their tank. She slips from Magnus’ arms, stepping over his toolbox and a spare set of armor to press her forehead to the glass.

“Hey there, buddy,” she hums happily, singing back Fisher’s three note oscillation of excitement. Her tone is as flat as it always is and Magnus feels his heart squeeze so tight he nearly sobs. 

Magnus wraps his arms around her from behind, arms tight around her waist as he buries his face into her hair. “Lucretia, Luce— _Lucy_ ,” he whispers hoarsely, voice trembling on the edge of tears.

She twists in his grasp, throwing her arms around his neck. “Magnus, I’m so sorry,” she whispers. “I told you I’d be back, and—and, I’m so sorry.”

“I’m sorry, I was a jerk,” he says, cupping her face between his palms. She’s so small in his grasp, fragile and alive. Death comes and goes for them so often it’s easy to forget just how easy it is to accidentally lose themselves. So often they die in battle that a death like hers, preventable, accidental, sudden, is rare now and just as heartbreaking as it’s always been. “I shouldn’t have lashed out because I was hurt,” he mumbles.

“I started it,” Lucretia sighs. “I’m sorry too. The fight we had at first, I—I _know_ you love me, Magnus, but sometimes what I know doesn’t catch up with how I feel, and… I’m so sorry.”

“No, I should have left you alone when you said to,” Magnus mumbles. “I promise I’ll leave you be if you ask me to, I swear, okay?”

She nods, stroking her fingers through his sideburns, through his hair, then tugs him down into a soft kiss. “No more dying early, either, especially if we’ve fought,” she says seriously.

He laughs, picking her up again. “Can’t make promises, but I’ll try my best. You?”

“Yes,” she agrees, settling comfortably against his side as they curl up in her bed. He holds her tight, hand spread over her shoulders as she tucks her head against his collar.

He rubs up her neck, fingers resting at the place where he remembers feeling blood on her corpse, instead feeling the warmth of her, and then, her pulse when he lets his hand cup her jaw, pulling her up into a soft kiss.

“Give you space, no dying, got it. Pretty easy,” he promises.

She smiles at him and nestles closer.

* * *

The Relics are every horror Lucretia had been afraid of, and more. Lup disappears in the night, and Taako and Barry can’t find her. Everyone is ruined, grief-wracked shells of themselves, and below, people are still dying, still killing, still ruining over the things they made.

Barry and Taako go for days without sleep, dark shadows under their eyes as they collapse against each other in the galley. Davenport is quiet. Merle’s plants wither and die as he forgoes their care to look down at the planet whose very topography he’s changed. Magnus doesn’t sleep much, pacing the deck when the dreams and the worries come, whispering the name of a little girl Lucretia has never met.

And Lucretia… She makes up her mind two weeks after Lup disappears. She withdraws quietly, locking herself in her room for swaths of time, spending less and less time out of it. There comes a week where she doesn’t leave at all.

Each day for a week, Magnus knocks on Lucretia’s door. Each day for a week, she sighs and shakes her head.

“I need time, Magnus. Please give me some time,” she begs.

He presses seven kisses to her forehead. On the eighth day, she doesn’t open her door at all.

“Please, Magnus, I’ll come to you when I’m ready to talk about it,” she pleads. “I don’t want to fight.”

 

 

Eventually, he breaks his promise, but then, it’s too late.


End file.
